Spain, guest of honor country of the Bogotá Audiovisual Market – BAM

Spain participates in this event with an important delegation of producers and professionals from the audiovisual industry. Arantxa Echeverría and Cristina Gallego will officially open the BAM Talks, after having participated in the Cannes 2018 Directors' Fortnight.

The ninth edition of Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM), which will be held from July 9 to 13, 2018, has Spain as guest country of honor. The BAM will have an important delegation of Spanish professionals from the audiovisual sector, who will arrive in Bogotá to explore the Colombian market, in order to strengthen cooperation in the field of audiovisual industries.

The Spanish delegation, which will travel to Colombia thanks to the collaboration of the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) through the Spain Colombia Culture Focus and the Spanish Embassy in this country, will be made up of ten producers and thirteen industry professionals who will be present at the BAM Talks, BAM Projects, BAM Stories, producers with extensive experience in co-productions with Latin America, screening juries and a select group of experts who will participate in the SGAE Co-production Forum – General Society of Authors and Editors.

The presence of the director, screenwriter and producer Arantxa Echeverría is notable, who premiered her debut film Carmen y Lola last April in Spain and with which the BAM will be inaugurated on the night of July 9. The BAM audience will learn the story of Carmen and Lola, two gypsy teenagers who try to move forward with their romance, despite the inconveniences and social discrimination to which they have to be subjected by their family.

On Monday, July 9, at 11 in the morning, Arantxa will officially open the academic programming – BAM Talks, together with Cristina Gallego, producer of Embrace of the Serpent and co-director of Summer Birds. Arantxa and Cristina were with their films at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes 2018. This first BAM Talk seeks to give prominence to women in the audiovisual industry.

The audiovisual sector in Spain is currently going through one of its best moments. According to information from the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts of Spain (ICAA), "during 2017, 241 Spanish feature films were produced (120 feature films are documentaries and 4 are animated), of which 42 were in co-production with other countries. In addition, during the year 196 feature films have begun filming, and 153 feature films have been released in commercial cinemas."

We keep rolling

In addition to the Spanish delegation that will travel to Colombia, the BAM will host the exhibition "We keep rolling. Colombian and Spanish filmmakers" that Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) has organized to tour, for one year, the main Colombian cities coinciding with the celebration of their film festivals.

Curated by the author of the works himself, the photographer Óscar Fernández Orengo, the exhibition shows, through fifty photographs taken in the last seventeen years, the portraits of Colombian and Spanish filmmakers reflecting the special connection between artists from both sides of the Atlantic.

With a strong documentary character, it is a living work, which continues over the years, including new filmmakers and portraying existing ones at different stages of their artistic life. Spanish and Colombian filmmakers dialogue in this exhibition, wanting to seek their own identity beyond the common language.

After passing through Cartagena de Indias within the framework of the 58th edition of the FICCI, it can now be seen at the BAM in Bogotá.